When I am gone the cat sleeps on my bed
all through the afternoon, his slender paws
folded under his body. Or, sometimes,
he wanders through my parents’ room, sniffing
my mother’s clothes, scattered over the floor,

the dust on rows of picture frames. He slinks
into the dining room, his tail held tense
and low, weaving through the wooden legs, crouching
in shadows, his green eyes glinting, watching
my mother in the kitchen, chopping pale

onions. She sniffs and wipes her eyes with red
fingers, brushes back her hair. Tail twitching,
he watches her sit down, her shoulders slumped,
her back hunching above the plate. Later,
sitting inside the glass storm door, he sees

her looking at the budding cherry tree
I planted with my grandfather last May,
its drooping branches bending to the ground,
not laden yet with fruit or blossoms, but
swaying slowly in the August evening air.

I dreamed of half-remembered roads
and the cadences of another language
swaying and gliding like the movement
of a metro car in the dark between stations.

I wake expecting the smell of bread
in narrow city streets
and the cries of merchants
in morning sunlight.

Instead there are hills
upon hills and mountains
standing silent and cold
as we flow through highway curves.
I start at the sounds of English
and Hollywood television,
at the way the colors – the greens,
browns, and grays of the mountains –
are different here,
a shade barely noticeable
that even now begins to fade.

I shiver in the chill night air.
Moonlight ripples the surface
of the dark pond.
The grass is damp,
seeping into our shirts
and the backs of our jeans.
Talking through the night,
denying the dawn’s arrival,
our voices play in counterpoint
with the crickets and distant cars.

I imagine lying on the shore
of some primeval sea,
before the screech of errant gulls,
silent but for the steady meter of the water
lapping against rounded stones,
washing their tiny crevices
through the long darkness.

A duck flies out from the brush,
a blur of feathers in the lightening sky.
The rush of its wings riffles our hair,
shattering the moon so it separates
slowly through the water.

The horses' hooves punch
through yesterday's snow
fracturing the rays of sunlight.
Dry leaves skitter across its surface.
Their tracks wind in jagged lines
between the spindly trees.

I look back at you sitting so easily
in the saddle. You don't cling
to its cracked leather
or pull the stiff reins
as I expected, the way I twist
my fingers in the thin fabric
of your shirt at night
so I can sleep, the way the snow holds the earth
and reaches its cold tendrils
far down between the stones,
down and down
until April loosens
its cramped and frozen grip.

Ice floes bump and drift
off the shores of Reykjavík
above dark blue depths, statues
in the cold half-light.
They shift like the gray slivers
in your eyes, slipping in and out
of shadow.
Their cracking and groaning
makes a melody of highs
and lows, shaking in the air
as if blown through the channels
of an icy harmonica, sweet
as the sound of your voice
or the sheen of dawn
blooming like a rose
on your blond hair.

The sea breathes steady
in measures of rocks
clicking and rushing
forward
and back.
Out with a hiss, a whisper
of voices worn smooth
with the waves’ churning.
Their bodies have merged with the soil,
dormant seven hundred years
beneath the city streets.

Here stories seep from the walls,
trickle between the cobblestones,
and flow down to the water.
We carry them with grains of salt
in our dripping hair
and under our nails, caught
in the soles of our shoes.

And when we tumble
into the sky blue surf
and plunge beneath the surface,
we add our stories to theirs
and wrench the plot
into a twist.

Take me back to the old salt marsh,
to the pumping white wings of herons
flashing between the cordgrass reeds,
where water swells on oyster shells
and cattails whistle in the breeze.

Or take me to the black swamp water,
where drifting tendrils of Spanish moss
catch the light, tangled in trees and vines,
as it trickles down the cypress trunks
and tupelo to blackened bogs below
where peat simmers slowly in the depths,
of detritus and death
rising, occasionally,
in pockets of sulfurous air.

Take me where it is older, even,
than the rice plantations,
weathered wood poking
through palmetto leaves
and live oak trees,
beneath the languid creeping vines
where the ghosts of a thousand slaves
tramp silently through dust
beneath the swollen moon.

The highway unravels
between the mountains,
settling into the land’s
deep grooves. Pennsylvania
is cold this time of year, grey.

We skirt the mountain’s curve
and a valley blossoms
around the wide dark river.
Rows of trees ripple
brown under the grey sky.
Red leaves like schools of fish
float through the water.

I remember, once, on an October afternoon
I feed geese with my mother
and brother.
She tore soft white bread
with quick fingers
and gave us Oreos
to eat.
But I wanted
to eat the bread
from my plastic bag,
a piece for the geese and
a piece for me.

When the bag was empty,
the geese honked
with insistent black eyes,
long necks bobbing,
webbed toes inching closer
and closer to my sneakers
through the leaves.

I would tell them, now,
hunger is all a matter
of perspective.
But then I just ran away
to my mother and twisted
the halves of an Oreo
so I could lick
the icing.

I have known the loneliness of endless coffee spoons,
bleakness of white napkins folded in neat squares
placed on chipped saucers, all the sorrow of crushed sugar cubes,
desolation of discarded newspapers, shriveled tea bags, biscuit crumbs,
interminable emptiness of scratched chairs, austere tables,
routine of bitter black coffee, habitude of lukewarm milk
in miniature pitchers, monotony of muzak, muted lights
and dingy bathroom stalls down narrow hallways.
And I have seen the stark February sunlight seeping
through smudged glass windows, illuminating lips
sipping from steaming mugs, alighting on pale thin fingers
curled through curving porcelain handles, the myriad murmurings
of a thousand secluded conversations.

 Steam hissed and billowed up into Ellen’s face as she finished preparing the tea, clouding her vision for a moment like smoke. She coughed and waved it away with a wrinkled hand. Ellen made her tea strong, brewing the leaves for six minutes before adding a half-teaspoon of sugar and a splash of cold cream. She used her pale green teakettle to boil the water, the one she’d brought over from Poland. It was old and chipped, with the faint swirls of flower stems pressed into the porcelain. They reminded her of the red poppy fields outside Warsaw in June, swelling gently over the hills and farmland. But they’d all been destroyed in the war.
Tea was a staple for Ellen, a daily ceremony that marked the steady passage of time. Continuity and habit, these were things that organized life, that gave order to the chaos lurking beneath the neatly folded tablecloth and the stacked sugar cubes. In Warsaw or Philadelphia, it was the same. Szklanka herbaty or tea. What a strange language, this English, she thought. So rough on the tongue. Not quite so much as German or Russian, but still rough.
The doorbell tinkled faintly from the front room. “Come in!” Ellen called. It would be her daughter Ania, a professor of biology at Drexel University. She didn’t visit often. Her research kept her in the lab until all hours of the night, checking test tubes and pouring over thick scientific manuals and papers.
“Hi Mom!” Ania swept in with a stream of cold air and bent to kiss Ellen on the cheek. “How are you doing?”
“Ah same as ever. How the university treat you, Ania? You sleep enough, yes?” Ellen poured a steaming cup of tea for her.
“Yes, Mom, I sleep. The school does pretty well for me. They gave me a bonus last week, actually.” Ania played with the cup and saucer, turning it left and right and making the tea slosh against the side of the cup.
“Ania, this is good news, I am proud for you. What will you do with the money?”
Her daughter stopped fiddling with the teacup. “I bought two plane tickets. To Warsaw.” She looked up through her bangs.
Ellen was silent, staring at the kettle, following the twisting floral patterns with her eyes. “Ach, I don’t know, Ania.” Her fingers traced looping circles into the tablecloth.
“Well, you don’t have to decide now. I’ll leave them here, and you think about it. I have to go, I’ve got work.” Ania patted her mother’s wandering hand and left, closing the door quietly behind her.
Ellen looked at the tickets, lying next to the sugar bowl. The crisp white envelope was jarring against the tablecloth’s dark weave. She pushed the kettle in front of them, blocking them from view, and finished her tea.

That night, Ellen lay in bed watching shadows play against the ceiling of her bedroom, drifting and morphing into the darkness like smoke in the sky. When she fell asleep, she dreamed of the spires of the Old Town before the war, the cobblestoned squares and palaces, the pealing cathedral bells. She walked through the streets, again a child of twelve, looking eagerly through the shop windows at muslin dresses and pastries flaked with sugar. A light breeze stirred the poppy flower pinned in her hair.
But the dream changed. Hulking men in uniforms stalked towards her, the thunder from their heavy black boots ricocheting off the buildings. Houses and shops blossomed in flames as they passed, some exploding in spectacular sprays of mortar and wood. Their guns showered fire.
Ellen ran, following the people fleeing the soldiers, gasping and ducking. She screamed and stumbled when a man in front of her fell, his back pierced by three bullets, blood streaming through his coat.
She couldn’t run fast enough. The soldiers were catching up. Smoke billowed through the street, blocking out the morning sunlight. Ellen ducked into an alley and hid crouching in the darkest corner, her dress torn, knees scraped. The building to her left was burning, the smoke filling her lungs, so she could barely breathe. She closed her eyes and opened them. In front of her was a pair of pitch-black boots.

Ellen woke with a gasp. Always the dream, she thought. It always came back. Tea. Tea would help. She shuffled into the kitchen and filled the kettle, then sat at the table in the dark. The plane tickets sat illuminated by the light from a streetlamp peeking between the curtains. Destination: Warsaw, they said in neat type. But it wasn’t really Warsaw. That city was destroyed long ago, burnt to the ground, invaded first by the Nazis and then the Soviets. They chased away or killed its people, tried to wipe it off the face of the earth, to crush it beneath the heels of their boots. And they did. They murdered her city, her friends, her family, her language.
Her hands shook on the table. Steam spouted from the kettle with a keen piercing whistle, swelling into the air. Ellen moved the kettle off the stove, poured a cup of tea, and held the tickets close to the flame. They would alight like the flower baskets hanging from the windows had that day, flames curling up among the red poppies, smoke blooming in the sky. 

Someday you will forget my name, forget
that time we slept till three, waking only
to the sound of a fly, trapped in your window,
its papery wings beating on the dirty glass,
the buzzing soon drowned out by the neighbor
playing techno music, pulsing hard against
the quaking too-thin plywood walls. You’ll forget
staggering home in early October snow,
at six in the morning, slipping on ice
and rotting yellow leaves. The light pollution
cannot hide the stars tonight, you said, waving
one bony arm across the sky. Someday,
I'll be that fly, circling around, watching
the stoop in your back grow, your narrow shoulders
shaking in some distant December.
And with my long antennae I will feel
your skin roughening, tawny hair thinning
like the threads of a woolen blanket, washed
one too many times in harsh soap, its fibers
unraveling, bleached like broken seashells lying
half-buried in some silent ocean floor.

On my uncle’s back porch in July,
small green lizards splay their toes
against white wood, foregoing camouflage.
Heavy air presses the orchid petals
down until they touch the soil.

The palm fronds with their jagged outlines
cut dark against the sky
shake brittle fingers. The humid wind
rises. The hammock rocks, empty, back and forth.
Lightning reaches across

the horizon, stabbing deep into
the sycamores and sassafras,
then retreats back above the treetops.  

i.
After sunrise the house is quiet.
Eggs nestle, half-hidden,
in the Easter baskets
filled with green cellophane grass
on the kitchen table.
Bright blue and pink shells peek
from under the couch
and behind old picture frames.
The cat watches, grey tail twitching,
hoping for a chance to taste
the crinkling cellophane
as I rub the dirt of sleep from my eyes.

ii.
One Easter, my grandfather died.
Kneeling by the casket,
I watched his face, stiff like wax,
touched my child’s palm
to the cold skin, expecting resurrection,
or something.
I could not help but touch its strangeness,
could not swallow the ashy wafer
lingering on my tongue
after the service.